Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone, im a WvW enthusiast from Ruins of Surmia, i cant and i wont define myself a WvW expert but i do know a thing or two, and wanna see what you devs think about the recent big WvW changes that 30th April patch just brought in. Keep in mind that im talking about a T7 prospective, so things can be different (worse or better, i honestly dont know) in higher WvW tiers.

(IMPORTANT NOTE: this ISNT a QQ post about you nerf this, nerf that, that is too OP, the other is too Cheap etc etc, crying about something isnt my style, just wanna bring few things to Your attention.)

1st: 30 second delay on contesting (mainly works for lower tier keeps or any tier tower)

This, have some potential. Adding more realism to the game by forcing server to leave scouts inside towers/no WP keeps to check their state can be a brilliant idea to add more strategy. The counter is, a zerg consisting of lots of ppl can turn a gate/wall to ashes in no time, and ppl dont tend to guard a tower too much since it can turn into a lot of waiting for no reward at all. So, a huge YES for having some delay on contestings, but a huge NO for making it last 30 seconds before warn (a wooden gate can be blowed away in half the time easilly by a zerg, and an eventual scout(s) wont have the chance to call in for reinforcements in time to succesfully defend or have a possibility to do it)

2nd: AC 80% (105% with mastery) Damage buff

No. No. NoNoNo. NO! This is not just OP, or i wouldnt be so angry and will try to adapt to it. This is GAMEBREAKING. Giving a few defenders the chance to wipe easilly triple or more their numbers with a couple of spammed ac skills isnt the way to go. First of all, this makes rams totally useless, encouraging the exclusive use of long range sieges like trebs (catas can be easilly countertrebbed/taken down on high tier keeps/towers with fortified walls). How can u just think to Man a ram under such a annihilating rain of damages? not even a full bunker can resist it enough to deal a couple of hits. Second, it gives defenders an EVEN GREATER advantage on assaulters. For who thinks assaulting is easier than defending, heres a couple of defenders advantages i wanna list and u might wanna consider:

DEFENDERS:

- Can walk in / out walls as they like, striking and going back to refill (in case youre an ele, u can do it even during downed state and comfortable ress inside the walls)
- Can use exclusive siege weapons (cannons, mortars, oil) for both long and short range purposes (They tend to be destroyed by assaulters, but that takes precious time)
- Can organize into portal bombs/rushes while having more chance to be unnoticed while preparing em (thanks to the walls)
- Can have a safe and immediate supply point
- In case of keeps/SM fully upgraded, can waypoint back if they get killed and be immediatly in the middle of fight every 3 minutes (Wipe? 2nd chance. Might have even 3rd.)
- Can call in reinforcements from other Borders / EB and let em be immediatly in the core of action throught the Keep/SM waypoint instead of walking all the way
- Can better organize in case of 3-way-fights (X assaults, Y defends, Z comes in aswell, X and Z are in open field zone while Y can gain time for any purpose)
- Build unreachable sieges inside the walls to counter assaulters ones / putting pressure on the assaulting group

And i might have forgot something else. Assaulters only have surprise factor (if theres no one spotting em, which is rare) and the choice of what side they wanna break in, thats it. Considering all of this, adding the fact defenders now can be even greatly outnumbered and still hold the conquer points, is kinda gamebreaking imho and will make matchups to be win or loss during the first hour of resets and nothing more. Plus, this encourages small group to avoid fight each other to instead build fast an AC in the middle of nowhere and, yeah, first who build it wins the fight, if u get what i mean. If this was a try to destroy zerg mentality, it just will destroy smaller groups and encourages even greater blobbings just to take a t3 tower or a keep.

What i can notice after this patch is a bit of lack of knowledge about WvW game mechanics from the Dev team, and sounds me like “lets buff this outrageously and see what it happens” thingy.

Once again, i remark that im not a WvW expert and i can be wrong on this, but what i suggest, is that before doing such a big changes is better for you Devs to talk and confront with WvW expert guilds, we have many on surmia (wont make names cause i dont wanna risk to forget any of them) they will surely give u precious feedbacks and avoid committing mistakes like this one im sure u’ll fix as soon as possible.

Best regards,

[DC] Classicalz – A WvW Lover. Like it was before.

Heres a few suggestion about how to counter the ac buff i’ve gathered around (might be considered valid)

- Removing 80% damage boost on fire, leaving just the possibility to add +25% via Mastery line
- Making Siege bunker ability line at its max to give 100% siege damage reduction (20% for 1st, 40% for 2nd, 60% for 3rd, 80% for 4th and 100% for 5th slot) and increase Flame Ram health Pool by…X times (what u think its balanced)
- Making AC skills to have limited charges like elementalist’s conjured weapon (like 20 or 30 charges) after them the AC is out of ammo/destroyed and u’ll need to build another one (Wanna keep constant fire on assaulters up? Use tons of supplies.) This (imho) will also add a bit of “skill” in Manning an AC properly, making it not anymore a brainless spam siege, adding more tactical purpose (for example: “this ac have just 10 charges left but its on a core side, the other hits less but have still 30 charges, better think wisely which one to use”)
- (This is by far the best) Adding the chance to throw Asteroids with trebs to make em still feel powerful.

Writing “this is not a QQ thread” in bold at the top of a QQ thread, doesn’t change the fact that it’s a QQ thread.

lol at using cannons and oil. Hold on a sec, I want to stand in the thousands of AoE attacks as they rain down upon me.

Serophous.9085:

lol at using cannons and oil. Hold on a sec, I want to stand in the thousands of AoE attacks as they rain down upon me.

In lower to Mid-Tiers, using cannons and oils is the norm. In fact stacking up and building a cannon in the middle of a siege is also the norm, and so is focus heal on the person using a cannon.

OT: Defenders always did have the advantage. The way to look at it is if we compare equal numbers of defenders and invaders. From inside keeps/towers, you will always have the advantage of choosing when to attack, having the defensive siege coverage, and the ability to retreat to safety.

However, the one exception is the breakout event. In that case invaders easily have the edge.

There’s one thing people are somewhat ignoring about AC’s, and that’s the range buff. True its not as huge as the damage buff, but that means ac’s can be positioned at MUCH safer positions now than ever.

Moleless.1462:

Writing “this is not a QQ thread” in bold at the top of a QQ thread, doesn’t change the fact that it’s a QQ thread.

Infact it is not a QQ thread. If u dont stop at the bold part but have the effort to take time to read over, u might recognize this thread is about discussing it (ive remarked 2 times im not an expert and that i might be wrong, so im not crying about something, just wanna bring some issues to Dev’s attention by making em be discussed by the community)

PS: I have a condi mesmer also, did u see me crying about confusion nerf? (Tbh, i founded it legit since it was too OP)

Serophous.9085:

lol at using cannons and oil. Hold on a sec, I want to stand in the thousands of AoE attacks as they rain down upon me.

Doesnt change the fact they are there and can be used. And not every group have numbers to destroy them in 5 seconds down in T7, especially if u wanna go for a tower as a small organized group (10/15 man)

@Dijla, yeah, the breakout event is the only exception that passes the ball to assaulters. Also true that the increased range on AC as its current state is even more gamebreaking, with just 15 points in ac mastery u can basically man an untouchable weapon of mass destruction.

Problem is I don’t have time to read a 1000 word forum post in one sitting. Saying this is not a QQ thread just opens it up to scutiny.

joric.1042:

Problem is I don’t have time to read a 1000 word forum post in one sitting. Saying this is not a QQ thread just opens it up to scutiny.

Whatever. Look at it as u like, still, an opinion about thread content would be better than arguing about the nature of it.

Here are the notes in case you haven’t read them

World vs. World

Updated confusion and retaliation effects to do the same damage as they do in sPvP.
Added a buff to display time remaining before siege weapons are destroyed from inactivity.
Siege sites are now destroyed 2 minutes after being placed if they receive no supply.
Increased arrow-cart damage:
Increased Fire damage by 80%.
Increased Fire Crippling Arrows damage by 17%.
Increased Fire Barbed Arrows damage by 60% and increased the Bleed duration to 15^^seconds.
The “under attack” notice at objectives now displays 30 seconds after it is first attacked. Does not affect waypoint usage.
Siege weapon blueprints are now account-bound instead of soulbound.
Killing a supply dolyak now awards 3 points to the team that lands the deathblow.
Righteous Indignation now ignores damage from all sources.
Players can now deploy siege sites on enemy walls.
Siege weapons can no longer be built in no-siege areas.
Increased radius of cannon basic shot from 240 to 360.
Lotus Poison (thief minor trait, 15 in Deadly Arts) no longer applies to a trebuchet’s poison shot.
Frost Spirit (ranger utility skill) no longer applies 10% damage buff to siege weapons.
Increased boon resistance of siege golems so players can’t apply swiftness to them with increased boon duration.
Picking up supply while holding more than current capacity (due to a capacity buff going away) no longer reduces the supply down to current capacity.
WvW dialogue will now reopen to the last

My take
- confusion: not sure how this will play out, may give more build diversity
-siege timer: like this, Anet still needs to reward those who garrison and refresh though
-siege sites destroyed: won’t drop plans without supply counts now, suppose it clears clutter, wish there was an easier way to get supply count
-ac fixes: goodbye pvdoor. Rams now are ninja weapons. Big question is can you get the door down before it contests in 30s and gets defenders. Expect to see more catapults and larger forces to take keeps
- contested: delay seems ok. Do not like waypoint working though- makes it super easy to rez on site, to get to site to defend, and eliminates tactics aimed at thwarting reinforcements by contesting waypoint keeps
-account bound blueprints: yay, now all my alts can dump them in my bank
-deathblow on yaks: pretty sure the sharing the yak ethic is going to be killed by this change for the worse
-righteous indig now immune: ok finally
-deploy siege sites: does this mean you can use enemy siege? Or does it mean you can build on the walls? unclear
-cant build siege in immune: ok finally
-radius on cannons: ok fine
-lotus poison, frost resistance, boon resistance: ok if we are not applying player buffs to siege, should not leg specialist be in here too?

Lepew.7890:

-ac fixes: goodbye pvdoor. Rams now are ninja weapons. Big question is can you get the door down before it contests in 30s and gets defenders. Expect to see more catapults and larger forces to take keeps

Good, this is how it should be.

Lepew.7890:

- contested: delay seems ok. Do not like waypoint working though- makes it super easy to rez on site, to get to site to defend, and eliminates tactics aimed at thwarting reinforcements by contesting waypoint keeps

You have inverted the meaning of this change: the waypoint will function as it has before, meaning it will be contested immediately, not after a 30 second delay.

Lepew.7890:

-deploy siege sites: does this mean you can use enemy siege? Or does it mean you can build on the walls? unclear

This lets you build siege on outer walls while assaulting inner walls.

Lepew.7890:

-lotus poison, frost resistance, boon resistance: ok if we are not applying player buffs to siege, should not leg specialist be in here too?

Leg Specialist was also included, I believe the note was in the Warrior section instead of the WvW specific one.

Well hmm. If the waypoint becomes contested (crossed swords), but the keep does not, would not anyone looking at the map just now look to see if their WP is contested? I didn’t get on last night. Who played out there last night knows the answer here?

they would in the case of a keep with a waypoint upgrade built, for everything else tho..